


neon angels on the road to ruin

by clytemnestras



Series: fem february 2018 [2]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/F, Femslash February, riot grrl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 01:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13671750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: Kate understands the language of drums. Hitting on target, on time, the rhythm there to bear the weight of her girls’ chaos.





	neon angels on the road to ruin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ladymercury_10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladymercury_10/gifts).



Kate understands the language of drums. Hitting on target, on time, the rhythm there to bear the weight of her girls’ chaos. She can land softly, rise it up slowly so no one knows they've been hit until their hearts are trembling with the force of it. _Beat._ It's the backbone, the unofficial lead by which everything must settle around - Kate holds up the beat, and the music blows the world away.

 

“Admit it, Princess, you just like hitting stuff.” America raises an eyebrow, light glinting off the silver ring there, a matched set with the ring through the tip of her ear and the one at her septum.

 

Kate flips her off with a well placed drumstick, “I’ll admit nothing of the sort.”

 

America laughs her _America_ laugh, a bright and heavy rumble to suit her bass and her prowling walk. She blows a kiss to Kate and sets to fiddling with strings of her _bambina_ , muttering curse words and malaphors that will stumble their ways into lyrics someway, somehow. _America Chavez_ , Kate thinks, _a woman of universal intersection._

 

America matches the universe the way the small bruise like a ring of teeth marking the curve of Kate’s inner thigh matches the points of America’s smile.

 

“You can't fool us, Kate.” Cassie picks at the flaking wall paint, an eggshell blue that lodges itself deeply under her fingernails. The air in the backstage room ( _“It has an actual, I swear-to-fuck dressing room,” America had said. “An extra wide janitor's closet isn't a dressing room,” Kate had countered_ ), with it's damp and it's dust has Cassie coughing too much for Kate's liking when her throat is their moneymaker. America snatches one of Kate's drumsticks and hurls it at Cassie’s hand hard enough to make her yelp and drop her hand from the wall.

 

“What the hell?” Cass' pout makes her fourteen again and still the red and blonde shadow at Kate's heels. Kate inhales sharply and hides her expression in the concentrated twirling of her remaining stick.

 

“ _C_ _hica_ , I’m not having my darling singer inhaling a fresh lungful of lead paint, thank you very much.” America’s eyebrow ring winks again, like a steel third eye staring the room down.

 

“Whatever,” Cassie says, and Kate seems to only blink before she has a lap full of nineteen year old girl. “Kate will kiss it better,” she says, grinning like summer sunshine, and Kate forgoes the hand and kisses her softly on the cheek.

 

Cass is still a bit green, bright eyed, her core as soft as velvet, but the girl thinks she's Cherie Currie. And with a mic in her hand, slinking across the stage with all the best intentions, Kate and America believe it, too.

 

Her voice can carry all of America's vitriol and turn it into something delicate and beautiful and _raw._ She grows three sizes under the spotlight, and everyone wants a taste.

 

She snaps her gum at Kate and it breaks the illusion. “Earth to Kate,” she says, chewing noisily. “I know I'm pretty but I'm not _entrancing_.”

 

She blows a bubble, and it's the same shade of pink as her shiny lip gloss.

 

*

 

Kate is on the cusp of sixteen, and Cass is fourteen and they have been passing back and forth a magically procured bottle of peach schnapps because good intentions mean nothing at these rich guy science mixers. Kate's dad just dumps her in a gown and sends her into the library where all the other pretty girls get locked, models, mannequins, docile little lambs who've no business talking business.

 

Nevermind that Kate tracks the Dow Jones easier than anyone in her father's employ. Nevermind that Kate is more full of hunger.

 

Cassie walks in wearing firetruck red and fixes her eyes on Kate, her violet sequin gown and her pointless masquerade mask and says in the brightest voice imaginable, “I am so sick of this science bullshit.”

 

Kate laughs and pulls the heavy glass bottle out of her handbag and offers Cassie the first drink.

 

The other kids disappear one by one, but Scott sticks around to talk patents, to talk distribution, to talk, _how do I make a quick buck off of this shit,_ and Kate and Cassie are there, trading the bottle and talking about how they want to destroy the world and build up something new from the wreckage.

 

The room seems to drop low like the flames of the last surviving tealights dotted around, and Kate feels all the bones in her body come loose.

 

“Something bad happened to me, Cass,” she whispers against the swollen emptiness of the library. “And I just… want to make the world a place where something like that can't happen again. To anyone.”

 

And Cassie, in her red taffeta and her soft, too-knowing eyes just leans in and kisses Kate on the mouth.

 

When she breathes, and it's a heavy, weighty breath against the cool slickness of Kate's lips she says, “I’m giving you back a first something. So you can have it all over again.”

 

Kate is fuzzy-headed on bubbles and sweetness and she gasps too loud for the echoing room. “Was that your first kiss, Cass?”

 

Cassie smiles, like it doesn't mean anything, like she isn't fourteen and too small for the world to even imagine her. “And now it's yours.”

 

*

 

Monica taps on the dressing room door when Kate is three quarters into a jack and coke and Cassie has recited all of Jabberwocky in a sing-song voice to warm up her weapon of mass destruction.

 

“Two minutes until lights up, ladies.” She winks at them and ducks away as quick as she appeared, only the light flap of her leather duster indicates she was ever there. She's one of their champions, always pushing them to gig more, scream more.

 

America once called her an atom bomb.

 

Monica had laughed at her and said, “Think bigger.”

 

It's America who leads them out, through the black hole corridor towards the stage. America is always thrumming with energy, ready, waiting, exploding. She's barely contained until shes let loose onstage - then she's in supernova.

 

Hiding in the cramped, square foot of dark, Kate can sense just from the vibration that it's going to be a rowdy night. The thought makes her grin wickedly.

 

They give Cassie one more moment of quiet calm, breathing deeply in, and exhaling slowly out, before the three of them join their rough hands and walk together into the light.

 

*

 

America launches herself off the drumkit in the final throes of their set. She ditches her bass and backflips off of Kate's kit, a savage smile on her face as she soars.

 

The crowd roars.

 

She looks like she did the first night Kate met her, wild eyes and wild haired, at home in the Soho punk bar but also nothing like anything Kate had seen before. She was just… rhythm, too lost in the beat of the music to feel the world moving against her, swaying and swinging along to the emotion, not the song.

 

Kate wore the bruises of that night, the quiet ones on her hips and the loud, daring ones that smattered her long neck for two blissful weeks. It's why she likes these cramped, dirty clubs the best. When you're hemmed in, restricted, chaos swells more beautifully. Being pressed tightly against sweating bodies and deafening speakers, just like being pushed inside a bathroom stall and letting your body writhe and take over.

 

Cassie, at the front of the stage has her back arched so far she looks like a doll, delicate and unnatural, and when she flies back up, her hair flying like radiation from a star the room can barely contain its energy.

 

Kate pounds the drumkit hard, and the poor thing takes it, holds together even as they rocket through a Hole cover and finally land on America’s _piece de resistance_.

 

Kate slows to a soft heartbeat of a beat and Cassie breathes the words out like poetry, only a bluesy rhythm on America's bass to weave a melody. It's stark for them, for this place, and the crowd’s reaction is unsettled as they gradually increase pace, as Cassie’s voice drops lower, deeper, harsher.

 

The crowd succumb to what they think is lullaby and Kate taps out quick timpani beats on her cymbals when Cassie _growls_ and the whole universe comes crashing down around them. America blows a kiss to the crowd and that's all they get for their stunned silence.

 

It isn't until the girls duck away from the stage the cheering begins, and _it's too late_ , Kate thinks, _the world already ended and you missed the birth of the next one._

**Author's Note:**

> pandering time: if you liked this fic check out my [payhip](https://payhip.com/celestiologies) for more writing or consider buying me a coffee [here](ko-fi.com/lucyhannahryan)
> 
> or just add me on tumblr [@bohemicns](www.bohemicns.tumblr.com) and chat. that too.


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